The images are symbolical

I was much struck recently by a young lady I was tutoring who gave the right answer when confronted with a question from an old "Practical Criticism" paper; that is, a verse was quoted, and she was to spot the date of it, giving her reasons. Sure enough, she found the images showed that this bit was late eighteenth-century; but what the examiners would not have found out was that she had no idea what the verse was saying. It urged you to carry out one of those terrific pieces of landscape gardening, cutting away the side of a hill, digging a lake, planting a forest, to improve the prospect from your country house. She thought the verse was only pictures of scenery, because she never bothered with verbs; to answer questions in the examination you only needed the images. I do not think you could really get through on this plan, but some people think you can. When the examination question says "Evaluate the following poem," the student will happily write down, "Significantly, the images are symbolical." What they signify, or what they symbolize, he does not say; he considers that if he did he would look low-class and philistine.
-William Empson, Argufying, 167

So...

...let's just get this straight: we're in the middle of an "economic downturn" (i.e. a depression) caused by unregulated Wall Street speculation, and are seriously talking about extending tax cuts to the wealthiest 1% of people in the nation, placing a freeze on pay increases for government employees, reducing the deficit overall, and (in local politics) cutting back on major infrastructural improvements that would employ new workers (the ARC tunnel) as well as help the poor schmoes who each have 2 hour commute into the city.

This is symbolic...

A golden MST3K moment I'm always going to remember whenever I get the temptation to interpret something as a symbol:

In The Castle of Fu-Manchu, three characters get a notice they have to return to London. Cut to: the train scene above. Crow (on the right, if you're not familiar with the best show ever) says: "This is symbolic of their return to London."

(Another gem from the always way-too-smart MST3K fans, that I stumbled upon recently: summarizing the plot of the horrible Time of the Apes, one writes, "a plot device transports a woman and two kids to a time when apes rule.")